Stanford awards $100 million subcontract for test of Einstein's theory

STANFORD -- Stanford University will award a $100 million subcontract to
Lockheed Missiles and Space Co. to build the spacecraft for what may be one
of the great physics experiments of the 20th century -- Gravity Probe B,
which is designed to test two crucial predictions of Albert Einstein's
General Theory of Relativity.

Lockheed of Sunnyvale, Calif., was chosen as the building subcontractor
after a Stanford-led team with five key outside consultants evaluated the
proposals. Stanford is developing Gravity Probe B under contract from the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, under the direction of
Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

The selection of the subcontractor essentially clears the way to schedule
Gravity Probe B to be tested aboard the space shuttle in the summer or fall
of 1995, and to be placed in polar orbit around the earth by rocket sometime
in 1999.

The experiment will measure how space and time are "warped" and
"dragged" by the presence of the earth and its rotation by measuring
extremely small changes in the spin of four super-round gyroscopes.

The gyros will spin on gas jets within a quartz block so that they touch
nothing as they rotate. By freezing the environment around the gyros to near
absolute zero, the Stanford scientists will be able to measure the
infinitesimal changes in the spin.

If the satellite confirms Einstein's general theory, it will increase
astrophysicists' confidence in applying it to new stellar systems, and,
perhaps, make some physicists heave a sigh of relief. If it finds Einstein
was not completely correct, "all hell will break loose," said principal
investigator Francis Everitt. The latter finding would radically alter
present views of the structure and origin of the universe.

Stanford engineers and scientists have been working on Gravity Probe B for
a third of the life of the university, and the project has taken up most of
the professional lives of several of the university's researchers. What began
as a conversation between several faculty members in a swimming pool in 1960
has evolved into a $250 million to $300 million project sprawling almost a
quarter of a mile across the Stanford campus, employing at any one time as
many as 100 people, including Stanford students.

Even before the experiment is launched:

Stanford physicists and engineers have created quartz and niobium
gyroscopes that are by far the roundest objects ever built by anyone, perhaps
the roundest objects in existence. Some vary from the perfectly round by no
more than the widths of two atoms.

The Stanford researchers have achieved the lowest magnetic field ever
attained on earth.

The developers have spun off a $2 million project, now funded by the
Federal Aviation Administration, that has created a navigational system so
accurate it can tell the location of an aircraft within centimeters. * The
project has produced 50 doctoral dissertations and has employed more than 200
graduates and undergraduates in the research since it started in 1964.

Gravity Probe B was the first large project to test a new method of
managing NASA projects. In it, NASA worked with a university, which in turn
subcontracted to a corporation; usually, NASA has gone first to a
corporation, which then subcontracted with a university. The new method
drastically cut the amount of control and paperwork required for the project.

Gravity Probe B has survived every NASA budget cut because of strong
support from the outside scientific community, including that of four Nobel
laureates in physics, none from Stanford. Frank McDonald, chief NASA
scientist, called it "the most challenging test we'll undertake in this
millennium."

"We seem to have strong support at the higher levels of NASA, and I think
that has been a major turning point for us," said Professor Brad Parkinson,
program manager of the project.

At the moment, the people on the project are working either in Stanford's
High Energy Physics Laboratory, an old hangarlike building taking up space
once used by Stanford's early linear accelerators, or in a prefabricated
building near the engineering complex. The headquarters building is so
crammed, the central processing units for the project computers are located
along one wall of the men's room.

"We're working first of all on the science payload itself," Parkinson
said. "That consists of our building the quartz block, the gyros, the
readout system, everything we slide down into the dewar [the thermoslike
device that will keep the instruments and gyros supercooled].

"The second aspect is building the dewar and the vacuum probe," he said.
"We've 'prototyped' both of those, and those are being done for us by
Lockheed in Palo Alto. The vacuum probe is a great big metal tube that
maintains the vacuum, is made of aluminum, and slides down into the low
magnetic-field region and provides support for the science instrument. It's
like a long pencil you slide down into [the dewar]. It's a very complex piece
of hardware."

The experimenters have built one dewar that is identical on the inside to
the one that will fly in the shuttle and on the rocket, but has special test
instrumentation on the outside. They are designing one that will resemble the
one to be used in the actual experiment.

Additionally, they are putting together the test equipment that will fly
on the shuttle test.

Parkinson said the physicists and engineers are ground- testing the
equipment.

During one of the tests, they "achieved the lowest magnetic field ever
attained on earth, which is about a tenth of a microgauss."

The remaining task is to actually build the spacecraft for the experiment,
the purpose of the Lockheed contract.

Currently, there are 45 faculty and staff from six different Stanford
departments: physics, electrical engineering, aeronautics and astronautics,
applied physics, mathematics and mechanical engineering working on the
project. About 20 undergraduates can be at work at any one time. During the
summer, students from other institutions work at Gravity Probe B.

The project even employed several high school students a number of years
ago, one of whom is now working on Gravity Probe B while a student at the
University of California-Berkeley.

The navigational system spin-off was developed by two graduate students
and now is being administered by Stanford's Department of Aeronautics and
Astronautics.

"For those detractors who say that a large program can't produce
small-scale research, we're the classic counterexample," Parkinson said. "I
think what's going on with the [project] is a wonderful example of where
technology takes you if you let it -- if you let bright students and
encouraging faculty work on these things."

-jns-

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